La Norteñita

In the current national food truck frenzy, you’ll often hear that Houston is privy to a burgeoning new fleet of trucks. And, to be sure, the quality and quantity of trucks that have popped up in the last year is astounding — that is, insofar as the challah roll and truffle oil types go. But really, those are only a small percentage of Houston’s mobile food fleet: when it comes to taco trucks, Houston wrote the book.
To that end, I decided, «Enough with following the aioli trucks on Twitter, I’m gonna pull over at that shady pollo asado truck I see parked on 249.» And so I did, at La Norteñita. The small, yellow truck has a couple of cartoonish chickens painted on the sides, so, in passing, I thought I might be in for something along the lines of Pollo Campero or Pollo Loco. The worn trailer housed a stern faced proprietor, who seemed about as confused as the few patrons seated at nearby picnic tables were that a bolillo like me was stepping up. Spanish is exclusively spoken here, and not wanting to put the cook through the hassle of listing off his menu (which I didn’t see posted), I just shot from the hip and got three chicken tacos on corn tortillas, with onion and cilantro — a pretty standard taco truck order.
The chicken was excellent, chopped up from a whole, rotisserie style chicken. This meant that one of my tacos did have a couple of cartilaginous bites from the rough hewn bird, but it was tender and juicy with savory but not overwhelming spices. The fresh chopped onion and cilantro are the perfect compliment, and a sizable tub of spicy green tomatillo sauce was thrown in the bag, which I liberally applied to these delicious tacos. $ 4.50 for 3 amply stuffed chicken tacos, que bueno.
This is definitely a working class truck of the sort that puts H’s in the wrong place, for example, on «abierto» but not on «hamburguesa.» But these trucks are really Houston’s heritage, catering to local painters and carpenters and the occasional gringo like me, serving up delicious, homemade tacos and tortas. I like a delicately fried avocado taco with cilantro slaw as much as the next guy, but in the maelstrom of new gourmet mobile eateries, don’t forget about the hard working veterans, and don’t be afraid to take a chance.